I'm starting to get into turing an iPad app I made with phonegap and converting it to become an android app as well. But where as Xcode lets you specify iPad only, I'm not seeing this option any where in the new Android Studio IDE. Is this an option when working with Android? Any ideas or help is appreciated.
XCode would not give you an option to convert your iOS app for Android. If you are going the native way, then you use XCode for the iOS app and Eclipse for the Android app. If you want to save time and effort, then framework like PhoneGap is created for this very purpose. Instead of using Objective C or Java, you create the app with HTML, JS and CSS and it would work on all major supported platforms of PhoneGap.
About the form factor/screen size, Eclipse does not filter on screen size, however the Play Store does and this is controlled by the supports-screens manifest attribute.
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Please, am a web developer. I just built a web app for a school to manage their results and fees.
Now, i intend to build an app on android and ios so its 'easier' for both staff and students to get notifications and interact better.
Is JQuery mobile the asnwer?
Thanks for your reply
jQuery Mobile doesn't create an application for Android nor for iOS, it only makes websites look better on said platforms.
To create a real, native, application for Android you should use Android Studio. To do the same for iOS you need XCode and MAC OS X.
But, if you prefer to write websites, Apache Cordova does what you need. Allows you to create apps for any platform using your usual HTML, CSS and Javascript.
I'll drop the link here so you can check it out.
https://cordova.apache.org/
Another approach is creating a basic Android and iOS app that simply opens a web page (your website), but it is most of the time lacking in performance. If this last approach interests you, just look up "WebView" for Android, "UIWebView" for iOS (Obviously you'll need Android Studio and XCode)
EDIT
This is an old answer, now a ton of different technologies exist to build multiplatform applications, without even losing out on performance (for example, see react-native)
If you have already built the app using JQuery mobile and want to make it into an app I recommend looking at Cordova (PhoneGap) https://cordova.apache.org/
For notifications etc I found https://www.pushwoosh.com/ to have the best integration
I have a problem understanding how phonegap works and i cannot find the answer in docs.
I installed phonegap on windows and phone device and played around with codes in www/* folder.
However, when I use phonegap-build to make my android app it extracted the files from platforms/browser but not the www/*
I know it sounds stupid but should i make different apps for different devices in different folders?, i know this cannot be true. so my question is:
If I make an app inside www/index.html how can I convert them to android .apk app?
Android WebView used to display web pages in native applications. But, Phonegap is a tool which is used to develop hybrid applications using html and javascript. Don't confuse with Android webview and phonegap. Both used for different purpose. You have to use separate folder for each projects.
Converting Your Phonegap App to an Android App w/ PhoneGap
Difference between a native application and a cross-platform mobile application
I have one simple question, that is can I convert my android .apk app into ios using any software? If yes, then please give me the name of that software. If any alternative method for that please guide me.
Google has a tool to convert the back-end, nothing for front-end though
http://www.xda-developers.com/google-tool-helps-developers-port-android-apps-to-ios/
There is a new startup that clains to convert the APK to IOS.
It's called MechDome.
The goal is very simple and attractable:
Reduce time to market by eliminating cross-platform development. Automatically convert your existing Android apps to high-fidelity, native iOS apps.
There is nothing out there that would convert apk into ios app. To my knowledge there is also nothing out there that could translate android code to IOS. The operation is simply too complex for a simple tool to manage.
However, there are tools you could use to make your apps (developed by you) work across multiple platforms. I'm sure there are more, but here are 2 of them I found in minutes (look into them if you are interested): Apportable, Phonegap (discontinued as of 2020/03. It was made obsolete by ProgressiveWebApps - PWA).
In past decade or so WebApps have been picking up for anything that is not too graphically demanding as they can run on anything that has a Web Browser. With this style devs pretty much open their website in a platform-specific executable and it looks like an app.
As for your existing app depending on complexity of your software you have to rewrite from a little to a lot of code to adapt to IOS APIs.
In short: No. Unless your app is build on multiplatform framework, converting means manual adaptation.
There is no known way to convert an android app to iOS. MechDome which is a Developer Tool that Automatically Converts Android Apps into iOS Apps seems to have stopped as of 30/03/2021. link
However if it is your plan to launch android and iOS app from one coding project, use Flutter which allows you to launch on both platforms simultaneously.
Flutter is Google’s mobile UI framework that provides a fast and expressive way for developers to build native apps on both iOS & Android, using a single codebase.
Get started here link
I developed an android application with Phonegap and I want to convert it to iOS as well. Before starting my project I heard that we are able to convert same project with multiple platforms using phone gap. But now I don't know how to convert my project to IOS. Can any one suggest good tutorial OR examples to do it.
And also mention what are all prerequisites to convert my android application to IOS using phone gap.
Suggest me some tutorials with examples.
With phongap you can target all platforms including iOS, android and windows etc. using HTML 5, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Code base remains same for every platform. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status. refer docs http://docs.phonegap.com/en/3.2.0/guide_overview_index.md.html#Overview
Phonegap is not for converting one build to another.. Using phonegap you can develope for all platforms using phonegap framework, you can generate .apk,.ipa,ota, etc as you wish using sdk in your pc or using phonegap build service. You can read here(phonegap authentic doc) how can you do it for different plaforms.
Nb:Phonegap provides complete documents in their site itself, you can go through and understand, it is helpfull.
You can build on each platform. If you don't want to do that, they offer a Build service that build your app on each platform for you. See https://build.phonegap.com/ for more info.
With phonegap you can create all platform application with same package just you need to clear yourself that for IOS you need certificates to build it. Otherwise same package you are using for android can use for IOS also.
I was talking with someone about iPhone and Android apps and they said there was something around called "Titanium" that could convert an iPhone app to an Android app and vice versa; being that they are written in different languages (amongst other nuances) I found this a little hard to believe.
I'm assuming he meant this
From what I can understand, you can't "convert" an existing app from one to the other, but if you build an iPhone app based off of this API THEN it can be converted to the other?
Am I right in my thinking?
You're almost right. In Titanium you build your app using JavaScript (and HTML/CSS for webviews - sort of webpages) and it converts it to native code for both platforms - Obj C for iOS and Java for Android. However you still need to write a significant amount of platform specific code because not everything will work right out of the box on both platforms. And yes - you can not convert existing apps using Titanium to anything.
The word "convert" is inaccurate in describing what Titanium Mobile does. You don't "build an iPhone app based off of this API", you write your app using the Ti API (which is based in Javascript/HTML/CSS), and when you compile that app you end up with both a native iOS app package and a native Android app package.